Incredible video - Citation Jet filmed going off runway into a bay

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V06LBgfuxgA&NR

I couldn't believe what happened afterwards in the water! Crazy!

Very lucky noone was injured or killed.

 

Unreal, that is Bader Field in Atlantic city NJ. Very Short runway with several planes in the drink over the years. Sadly the airport is closing Sept 1,2006.

The Citation Pilot was a Dumbass !!!

 

Found the NTSB report:

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_id=20050526X00676&ntsbno=NYC05LA085&akey=1

I wonder how that engine started up again - scary moment indeed!

 

Airport closed to jet traffic; landed downwind; landed long; tried to "fly" out of the bay.

Any mention of the pilot's blood-alcohol level?


Tough call on the closing: Bader has huge historical roots. It's about 90 years old, and a reference to it was the first published use of the word "airport" (according to the Oxford English reference).

But they pulled two or three aircraft out of the bay a year, there. And it puts a cap on the height of casinos in the city. The city doesn't want to pay for maintenance, and nobody wants the liability risk of operating it privately. (The NFCT closed quite a while back.) And the Casinos want to build higher.

The IFR approach is hairy -- I've landed there in a rainstorm that kept the Alfa from running (condensation in the tank fuel filter).

But without Bader (AIY), and with only a couple of shuttle flights out of the FAA operated Technical Center (ACY - in Pomona, 20 miles west) airport, that leaves Atlantic City on a long bus ride from Phila (70 miles) or NYC (90 miles).

The old art deco commercial terminal (from the 20s) at ACY is pretty neat looking. But I don't think nervous passengers would want to watch some of the commercial flight training or FAA test flights going on at that field while waiting to board their flights. (FAA test pilots are certifiably crazy.) (The ANG 177th FIG is also based there, too.)

How much of a city can Atlantic City be without an airport? They need to be upgrading Bader, not closing it.
(Unless the city is just waiting for FAA's lease on ACY to expire.)

(I used to work at the FAA center, back when the only commercial flights were Alleghany Commuter DeHavalland Twin Otters out of Bader. --- and the 177th were still flying F106s: like at a track, you learn to pause conversations in mid-sentence. )

 

Wow thats pretty incredible footage, thanks for posting.

What a nut job the pilot is. It said on the sectional it was closed to jet traffic. He failed to land at the threshhold of the runway. He failed to use emergency brakes. Then when he crashes he fails to shut down and secure the engines and activate the fire suppression systems.

But how did he get clearance to the airport? ATC cleared him for it when it is common plactice to always ident the type of aircraft your flying when Calling ATC. And the only way to do that is to say "Citation" on this plane.

He should have said something like "Altantic City tower this is Citation xxxx 15 miles out in bound from the Northeast requesting airport advisory" .

Seems to me the controller should have known better too.

 

Wow, by half way down the runway he should have realised..holy **** I will never set it down on this runway. He should have powered up and taken off again.

 

I thought that looked like AC.

 

Why were they filming it?

 

My thoughts as well. Any reason they called the guy crazy as he APPROACHED for landing?

 

Probably because he was trying to land an 11,000 pound jet on a runway that was about 500 feet too short on the best day

and oh yeah he was trying to do it with a 10 mph tailwind.

 

They heard him in the pattern and knew it was sketchy at best. I have landed there a dozen times and it is no place to come in Hot!

It is a dump but I am sad to see it close, it was great tocomein at night with the casinos lighting up the sky!

 

Thanks

 

He probably would have made it (just), if he landed the other direction (into the 10 knot wind), and touched down right at the threshold.

Instead, he didn't touch down until 1000ft down the length of the runway, plus needed a high landing speed to compensate for the tailwind.

If he had made it, would he have gotten into trouble for landing at an airport closed to jet traffic?

Also, does that airport even have Jet-A?

 

Forgot to mention that. The guy landed downwind instead of upwind and don't forget the runway was wet too. The FAA report said he needed 3500 ft of runway at weight and the strip was 3000 ft, but they tend to way over estimate that.
I think he could have landed it IN AN EMERGENCY given min. landing speed, a threshhold approach and emergency braking - all of which rocket boy failed to do. Worrying about fuel was obvously way beyond is mental capability.

But to answer your question these things do have range and he may not have needed to refuel at all. Also just because the airport was closed to jet traffic doesn't mean turbine equipment (turboprops) can't land and they seem more suited to this type of operating conditions anyway.

 

Possible explanation for the engine running is because He wanted to keep electrical power, as for the engine powering up by itself I do not think it did, as the nose started to pitch up the exhaust would increasingly point into the water as the pitch increased so would the spray giving the impression that the enging was spooling up, the increase in noise can be attributed to the higher back pressure at the exhaust as the tail pipe increasingly points to the water.

 

Nah I don't think so.

Firstly, a pilot would never leave an engine running (including the APU) to generate power after an accident, especially one into water.

Secondly, you can distinctly hear the engine spooling up (at 4:05 in the video), then firing to life, and developing quite a bit of thrust. It was clearly also the No. 2 engine thrusting.

I think the engine was not shut down fully and it reignited on its own. The intake and engine were not immersed in water, so it was free to do so. The NTSB report mentioned the right throttle lever was in a higher position than the left.

The pilot may have assumed the engines would not need to be shut down completely because he was under the mistaken assumption that they were inoperable due to water ingestion / immersion. Clearly that was not the case.

Any jet pilots here with knowledge of the startup, shutdown and emergency cutoff procedures of turbofan engines?

 

Air Gentry flies again......then crashes!!!

 

Admiral jet engines do not re-ignite themselves period, having been in the aviation industry for 32 years I never amaze at the things Pilots do so leaving an engine running when rushing to get out of a potentially sinking aircraft is definately plausible, I never said the intake or exhaust were in the water I said the exhaust was "facing" the water and clearly the intake is pitching up a reiterate that IMO the engine is not spooling up(which would be impossible anyway) but is an increase in sound due to the exhaust pointing towards the water causing an increase in backpressure which changes the engine sound to appear as if it is spooling up, also the increase in spray further increase the perception that the engine has a life of its own.

 

I don't know if the jet spooled up, or if it's possible to spool-up on it's own, but look at the video. The paople in the boats are moving at a fairly leasurly pace with their boats basically docked at the plane. Then something happens that causes everyone to get nervious - and the plane starts pitching and moving forward pretty fast.

I almost wonder if there wasn't someone at the contols who thought it'd be worth a try to try and get the plane closer to shore to avoid a full submersion. Crazy notion - but not as crazy as the landing attempt!

 

From the moment you see the plane in the water it is nose up with the engine outlets no more than a foot or two from the water. In fact the exhaust was almost touching the water when it suddenly started to blow steam and start to generate thrust. The fact that several guys whip their heads around to see what is happening would indicate that something changed at that moment.

It would also appear unlikely that someone inadvertantly hit the power levers on an already running engine as both boats and all the occupents were swung around the nose of the plane by that point. So unless someone was still inside and along for the ride or the engine responds VERY slowly to throttle input it spooled up on it's own.

Surely an electrical short could have caused that. Are CJ's FADEC (full authority digital engine control) controlled anyways? Does the FAA require submersion tests on aircraft electronics?

Plus, the engine stopped on it's own. If it can stop on its own surely it can start. I can not imagine they were that low on fuel that it burned out of gas.

 

Citations to My knowledge do not have FADEC engines, it can stop on its own rather easily from a variety of resons but cannot start for various other reasons as a sequence must be followed for them to start, low pressure fuel switches open,start valve opened sufficient air pressure to attain N1 rotation speed high pressure fuel cut-off to on position when the correct predetermined N1 is reached start valve to be closed after a higher running N1 is reached. Aircraft engines are indeed tested for ability to withstand the enviromental conditions to which They are likely to subjected to in normal service They are not or neither required to be tested for full water immersion.

 

The CJ2, which that appears to be, does have full authority controls but the CJ1 does not.

 

this guy ever heard of a go around? i mean come on... that was a long landing.

 

This was an older Citation jet (looked like a CitationII) without FADEC

I think the engines were at idle and when the ship sank some kind of electrical short caused the engine to power up.

 

A post by a member of the airdisaster.com forum:

EDIT: Yikes, 3000 posts!